A voice affecting the Scotch accent was appealing more frantically than tunefully to "Douglas, Douglas, tender and true." "It is Miss Yamfert from Samoset," the lawyer said. "She is dressed in Scotch costume." The voice sang on,-- "'Could you come back to me, Douglas, Douglas, In the old likeness that I knew, I would be so kind and faithful, Douglas,-- Douglas, Douglas, tender and true!'" "Very pretty," Putnam remarked rather savagely. "But, if Douglas is comfortable where he is, he'd much better remain there. If she really loved him, she would have shown it while he was in the flesh. I've no faith in a love which expends itself only in tormenting its object." "How harsh you are!" Patty said. "Doesn't your scheme of life allow any space for repentance?" "Yes; but I've the smallest possible faith in it. If she hadn't love enough for Douglas to treat him decently, he was better off with no love at all. No doubt she would think herself sincere in making frantic promises over his grave; but, if he were back, it would be the same dreary story over again." "Then Douglas had better leave her, and have done," Patty answered. She felt, that, under the guise of allusions, they were discussing their own relations. "You are right," he said. "But suppose he cannot choose? What if he be so bound up in her, that he would endure any thing, would forgive any thing?" "Forgiveness," she retorted bitterly, "is sweet to the forgiver." "It may at least show him his own weakness. If the lady's love for Douglas is not sufficient to make her glad of a small sacrifice for him, or at least to make her endure it, he has small reason to flatter himself upon the depths of her affection; and he must despise himself for wearing his heart upon his sleeve for her daws to peck at." "Well," she said irrelevantly, her heart leaping at the assurance that after all he still loved her, "who laughs last laughs best." "Not always," he returned. "The last laugh may have a bitterness from which the first was happily free." "Pooh!" she laughed, turning a pirouette, her cue standing out behind her. "How like two owls we are, talking in this gloomy room! Let us get out among people." She had suddenly recovered her spirits. Since he loved her, she forgot that she was wounding him, and that he was unhappy. At another time the thought would have produced tenderness: now it brought a reaction from her despondency, and for the moment she was her most piquant, saucy self. She hummed a snatch of song,-- "'You call me inconstant and fickle, But there's no justice in that; For the passing fancy I showed you'"-- "Patty!" her lover cried, catching her wrist, "are you perfectly heartless?" "I shall have a _post mortem_ made to discover," she returned flippantly. "It will be too late for my own information, but it will satisfy the curiosity of my friends."